


The fate of Dido from the fire divin’d

by Carmarthen



Category: Rebecca - All Media Types, Rebecca - Levay/Kunze
Genre: Alternate Universe - Companion Animals, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Animal Death, F/F, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hatred, Jealousy, Loss, Magical Realism, Psychic Wolves, Sexism, Unreliable Narrator, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-27
Updated: 2014-06-27
Packaged: 2018-02-06 11:28:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1856422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/pseuds/Carmarthen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It wasn't right for a girl to have a wolf, they said, not for a normal girl. There was something queer about a girl with a wolf, not quite natural. Certainly it wouldn't do at all for a girl to be seen in society with a wolf at her side, like some kind of heathen foreigner, or worse—an American!</i>
</p><p>
  <i>In smaller towns, they might put down a girl's wolf the very day of imprinting, before the bond had a chance to settle. A few days of sickness, fever and an upset stomach, and she'd be all right. She wouldn't even remember, a girl that age.</i>
</p><p>  <i>That was what they said.</i></p><p>(<i>Rebecca</i> + psychic wolves. <b>Warning:</b> contains a mostly off-screen animal death, for those sensitive to that.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The fate of Dido from the fire divin’d

**Author's Note:**

> For a tumblr prompt for _Rebecca_ with psychic wolf companions. It got away with me a tiny bit.
> 
> Title from Virgil's _Æneid._ Dido, Queen of Carthage, was known for both her loyalty (killing herself on her husband's funeral pyre) and her harsh rule.

Danvers knew the exact moment when she began to truly hate Mr de Winter's new wife, that meek, pale little thing who had the gall to think she could fill Rebecca's shoes.

It wasn't when she arrived at Manderley, mousy and lost inside Mr de Winter's overcoat, stammering greetings to the servants like she was no better than them. If a man of Mr de Winter's age and rank thought some silly young thing could comfort his grief, who was a housekeeper to say otherwise?

Certainly it wasn't anything she did after that, determined as she was to impose on no one, happy in her provincial way to leave the running of Manderley to Danvers (she was nothing like Rebecca, nothing like _her_ Mrs de Winter, the real Mrs de Winter).

No, in the end, it wasn't anything the girl _did_ that made Danvers hate her.

Nothing so simple as that.

* * *

It wasn't right for a girl to have a wolf, they said, not for a normal girl. There was something queer about a girl with a wolf, not quite natural. Certainly it wouldn't do at all for a girl to be seen in society with a wolf at her side, like some kind of heathen foreigner, or worse—an American!

In smaller towns, they might put down a girl's wolf the very day of imprinting, before the bond had a chance to settle. A few days of sickness, fever and an upset stomach, and she'd be all right. She wouldn't even remember, a girl that age.

That was what they said.

(Danvers still remembered her wolf's eyes, the palest gold of cottonwood leaves in autumn, wide and trusting. She remembered her wolf's fear when they took the pup from her arms. In time, the memory of her own illness had faded like any childhood memory, as meaningless as a toothache, but the memory of her wolf choking for air as the water closed over her head--that remained clear as crystal, bitter as rue.)

When she found Rebecca, her gay little charge Rebecca, hiding under the bedcovers with a wolf-pup not even weaned, she had not screamed. She had not wept.

She had, very calmly, fetched a saucer of milk from the kitchen and shown Rebecca how to feed it with a twist of rag. And she had, very calmly, explained to Rebecca that no one else must see the wolf—not her mother, not her father, not even her cousin Jack (especially not her cousin Jack, who wanted anything Rebecca had, with the thoughtless avarice of a boy never denied anything)—not yet.

By the time anyone else saw the wolf, it was too late, the bond too deep. Rebecca had her wolf.

They said, after Rebecca was gone, that she had never loved any living soul; Danvers had heard Mr de Winter's sister say it aloud, to her fool of a husband, and she'd heard it in everything Crawley didn't say to the new wife. She heard it in Mr de Winter's sleepless pacing at night, the pacing of a man who'd loved against his will and unwisely (but who could not help but love Rebecca, in her diamond-hard brilliance?).

Danvers knew better.

She had shown them all, Rebecca, stalking through society with great black Dido at her side, fangs gleaming white to match her mistress's pearls. There was nothing unnatural about Rebecca; she was _more_ than natural. She made it seem glamorous, having a wolf. Within a year of her debut, girls were leading wolfhounds on jeweled leashes, calling them by grand names like Cleopatra and Arsinoë. Young men, silly striplings with no wolves of their own, followed her like dogs themselves, pretending they did not jump with fear whenever Dido sniffed in their direction.

Rebecca laughed at all of them, after the parties, Rebecca in her nightgown imitating them until Danvers could no longer hide a laugh and Dido yipped with excitement, dancing around them both like a puppy. None of them could hold a candle to her Rebecca, not for a moment. None of them were fit to kiss her hem.

Mr de Winter was the only one who wasn't afraid of either Rebecca or her wolf, and for an entire horrible summer, Danvers had been afraid he was different. That he would accept Rebecca as she was, free and untamed, cruel and wild as a force of nature—not the declawed little thing the world wanted her to be. That Rebecca could love him.

But nothing had changed. Rebecca did as she pleased, as she always had, and there was Dido for Rebecca, the one creature Danvers could never bring herself to be jealous of. Even when she brushed Rebecca's hair at night and Rebecca absently petted the great wolf's head where it rested against her knee, Danvers was not jealous.

"Oh Danny," Rebecca had said, in that careless way she had, "I wish that people were as loyal as my Dido."

And Danny had smiled and kept brushing her hair, smooth stroke after smooth stroke. Mr de Winter had done this for a time, after the wedding, before Rebecca had seen him for what he was, not good enough for her; that was Danvers' task again, at least. This was something no wolf could do. There was no sense in envy of an animal, and less in envy of her mistress; nor even of that secret bond they shared, a kinship beyond words or touch. (When she closed her eyes at night to sleep, Danvers saw eyes yellow as autumn leaves, and could not breathe for the water closing in around her.)

Someday, perhaps, Rebecca would realize that there were two creatures in the world loyal enough to die for her.

* * *

A wolf didn't always die with their bond. People said it was because they felt the bond less keenly, less deeply, being only dumb animals; Rebecca had thought it was because they were stronger.

"Dido won't let herself die if I break my neck out there," she'd said cheerfully, the first time she took the boat out on a rough day, leaving Dido whining anxiously against Danvers' skirts. "You're too sensible for that, my girl."

When Rebecca hadn't come back, after the storm, Danvers sat herself down in Rebecca's room with a plate of scraps leftover from breakfast. That was how they usually died, wolves whose bond was taken from them, starving themselves to death.

They'd locked eyes, human brown to wolf gold. "You'll eat," Danvers told Dido softly, "or I'll tell your lady why. If I have to go on without her, so do you."

Dido whined, low in her throat, tail tucked between her legs like a puppy, and Danvers knew she'd won, even before Dido took the first bite.

After that, Dido slept across the foot of her bed, a living blanket of black fur. During the day, she went where she pleased: sometimes at Danvers' heels, sometimes roaming the grounds; she took a particular pleasure in frightening the village children.

But Danvers, never, ever, let herself forget that Dido was Rebecca's wolf, even though Rebecca was gone, but for their memories, hers and Dido's. Danvers didn't have a wolf, not anymore. Danvers had never had a wolf. They told her that, when the fever broke.

Dido never went in the west wing.

Then Mr de Winter brought _her_ to Manderley.

* * *

In the end, it wasn't anything the girl did.

No, it was Dido, sniffing around the remains of breakfast in the morning room. Great, black-coated Dido who had been Rebecca's loyal shadow, Dido who at first had made the new wife jump at every shadow in terror—it was Dido tucking her head under the insipid chit's hand to get her ears scratched, just as she once had with Rebecca, like a loyal dog. Dido, who had been proud as a queen, proud as Rebecca herself.

Girl and wolf sat there quite contentedly in the morning room, just as if Rebecca had never done the same, rubbing Dido's velvet ears while she wrote her correspondence, pausing every so often to dictate a little note to Danvers or make some clever remark. The new wife said nothing—she didn't dare make clever remarks to Danvers, if she even knew what a clever remark was, and she sat hunched in on herself in her plain gray dress, more suited to a nursemaid than to the mistress of Manderley. But her hand was on Dido's head all the same, as if she had the _right._ As if she were worthy.

 _Danvers_ hadn't forgotten.

Hate could grow from so little, in the end, as little as love: no more than a glimpse of yellow eyes.


End file.
